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Forget the Bedtime Story
We could fill a whole review with the negative comments about Carnegie from his colleagues and competitors that punctuate this film. As for the positive ones, these are simply meant to shine down from the carved lettering of his name on a thousand public libraries endowed for the poor.
There we have the enigma of Carnegie, and it is one we still see every day - the continual emphasis on charity-work by those enjoying wealth and glory that may have been achieved by dubious means.
Two hours is long enough to examine Carnegie in some depth, and this episode of the excellent American Experience series makes a fair fist of it. (The only omission that I can see is how the American Civil War impacted on the career of the young Carnegie - some interesting stories there that could have spiced the mix.) In case we are ever tempted to glamorise the Gilded Age of American capitalism, here is the raw underside of it, right in our face - a real bare-knuckle contest behind all the seductive imagery that normally distracts us.
So, predictably enough, we start with the bedtime-story version of his rags-to-riches career, which has been repeated 'ad nauseam'. Yet there are themes here that pop-up later in quite an ironic way. For example, his father was a self-employed weaver, put out of work by the big steam-looms, driving the family towards radical socialism. As for how many people Carnegie would later put out of work with new technology, this is well beyond count, and his espousal of Herbert Spencer's doctrine 'Survival of the Fittest' placed him firmly on the right wing.
Survival, though, may have been rather more front-of-mind with Carnegie than with those from more comfortable backgrounds. If the steel industry depended so heavily on low prices, and these depended on low wages, then he would have to be ruthless about pay and conditions - or go under. And ruthless he certainly was.
Although he was identified with some great technical innovations, we aren't told how much of it was his idea. I suspect that he had a different function on the team - the one with the hide of a rhinoceros, who could fight the whole thing through against big vested interests. There is a particular meanness in those eyes; perhaps he was the boardroom equivalent of the 'wee hard men' that would have haunted the streets of his native Dunfermline.
There was also a case of a genuine charity appeal from his early benefactor, who had promoted him from telegraph-boy to railroad executive. When this man lost everything in a stock-market crash, Carnegie simply ignored his plea for help. Instinctively charitable he wasn't.
In fact, something rattles altogether with all this charity talk. Might he have had something to feel privately guilty about? He must have presided over enough cases of hardship and hunger. Perhaps we can read some significance into the final snub to Carnegie from his ex-partner Henry Clay Frick (of the great art collection), whom he tried to reconcile with in old age. "We will meet in hell, where we're both going."
There we have the enigma of Carnegie, and it is one we still see every day - the continual emphasis on charity-work by those enjoying wealth and glory that may have been achieved by dubious means.
Two hours is long enough to examine Carnegie in some depth, and this episode of the excellent American Experience series makes a fair fist of it. (The only omission that I can see is how the American Civil War impacted on the career of the young Carnegie - some interesting stories there that could have spiced the mix.) In case we are ever tempted to glamorise the Gilded Age of American capitalism, here is the raw underside of it, right in our face - a real bare-knuckle contest behind all the seductive imagery that normally distracts us.
So, predictably enough, we start with the bedtime-story version of his rags-to-riches career, which has been repeated 'ad nauseam'. Yet there are themes here that pop-up later in quite an ironic way. For example, his father was a self-employed weaver, put out of work by the big steam-looms, driving the family towards radical socialism. As for how many people Carnegie would later put out of work with new technology, this is well beyond count, and his espousal of Herbert Spencer's doctrine 'Survival of the Fittest' placed him firmly on the right wing.
Survival, though, may have been rather more front-of-mind with Carnegie than with those from more comfortable backgrounds. If the steel industry depended so heavily on low prices, and these depended on low wages, then he would have to be ruthless about pay and conditions - or go under. And ruthless he certainly was.
Although he was identified with some great technical innovations, we aren't told how much of it was his idea. I suspect that he had a different function on the team - the one with the hide of a rhinoceros, who could fight the whole thing through against big vested interests. There is a particular meanness in those eyes; perhaps he was the boardroom equivalent of the 'wee hard men' that would have haunted the streets of his native Dunfermline.
There was also a case of a genuine charity appeal from his early benefactor, who had promoted him from telegraph-boy to railroad executive. When this man lost everything in a stock-market crash, Carnegie simply ignored his plea for help. Instinctively charitable he wasn't.
In fact, something rattles altogether with all this charity talk. Might he have had something to feel privately guilty about? He must have presided over enough cases of hardship and hunger. Perhaps we can read some significance into the final snub to Carnegie from his ex-partner Henry Clay Frick (of the great art collection), whom he tried to reconcile with in old age. "We will meet in hell, where we're both going."
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- Goingbegging
- Jan 18, 2014
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